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Jazz music originated in the United States. It was created by African Americans in the early 1900s. The sound of jazz was influenced by West African rhythms and music, and American folk music. A...
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John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie got his nickname because he liked to make jokes and act up on stage. He was one of the greatest of all jazz musicians, and the most famous native of Cheraw, South Carolina...
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Langston Hughes 1902-1967 Langston's father once discouraged him from writing poetry. He believed discrimination would keep the young Langston from finding success as a poet. But Langston continued to...
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Scott Joplin was born near Linden, Texas and raised in Texarkana, Texas, the son of a railroad laborer who had been a slave. Joplin showed an early and extraordinary aptitude for music, which was...
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Hugh Masekela was born in Witbank, South Africa on April 4, 1939. He began singing and playing piano as a child and as a teenager, was encouraged to play the trumpet by the British anti-apartheid...
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Mary Lou Williams was born in Atlanta, Georgia on May 10, 1910 and grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A prodigy, she taught herself to play the piano at the age of four. Williams could hear a piece...
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Woody Guthrie was born Woodrow Wilson Guthrie on July 14, 1912 in Okemah, Oklahoma. A keen observer of the world around him, he began to travel across the country as a teenager and spent much of his...
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Celia Cruz was born and raised in the working class Santos Suarez neighborhood of Havana, Cuba on October 21, 1924. Brought up in a musical family, she began singing in local contests and later...
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Louis Armstrong was born on August 4, 1901 and raised in the Storyville district of New Orleans, Louisiana. As a child he was a street singer and learned to play the coronet while in reform school...
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Illustration by Maria Manhattan 1932-present Nam June Paik was born on July 20, 1932 in Seoul, Korea. He studied music, art history and philosophy at the University of Tokyo, and in Germany at the...